This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

Shameful persecution of UK rape victims

In the Media

Letters, The Guardian, Monday 11 March 2013 20.59 GMT

In Somalia, Lul Ali Osman Barake was sentenced to a year in jail after reporting rape by a gang of men in military fatigues. She described being raped twice, first by the military, second by the judicial system. Following an international outcry, the verdict was quashed on appeal (Report, 8 March). Rape victims in Britain are also pressured to retract and imprisoned. Gail Sherwood and Layla Ibrahim were sentenced to two and three years in jail respectively after reporting rape by strangers. We are supporting their campaign to clear their names.

According to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, it was policy in the Southwark police specialist rape unit in 2008-09 to press women who reported rape to retract their allegations. This was true of police rape units in at least four other London boroughs (Report, 27 February). In 2011, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said he would personally review each false rape allegation case before prosecuting. A year later, he decided the Crown Prosecution Service was working effectively without his personal oversight. Yet rape victims continue to be prosecuted.

Last week Women Against Rape wrote to Mr Starmer about several other prosecutions, including of women who were raped for years as children. Each of the cases contravenes the DPP's 2011 guidance to prosecutors, which are supposed to protect vulnerable women and girls – teenagers, women who have suffered domestic violence or have mental health problems. It is a perversion of the law to prosecute rape victims while their rapists go free. It prevents victims from coming forward and encourages rapists to attack again. Why is this being allowed on the DPP's watch after all the apologies and the promises, especially in the wake of Savile and Rochdale? Do we need an international outcry to get justice also in Britain? The policy of imprisoning women who report rape is a miscarriage of justice and must be stopped. We urge the DPP to drop such prosecutions.